Cape Shiriya and Wild Horses

We had a beautiful Saturday and decided to try to complete our tour of "the hatchet" (Shimokita Peninsula) coastline. On a previous trip we'd made it around the south, west and part of the north coastline, this trip we went up the east coast to the northeast point, Shiriyazaki (Cape Shiriya). There are some horses that live at Shiriyazaki, whether or not they are actually "wild" or not is up for debate. They are in a very large fenced preserve area and willingly follow caretakers. Lots of people go right up to them and pet and feed them...we kept a "safe" distance. They are not little horses and with mamas close by we didn't get too close to the babies either. The coast of Shiriyazaki is covered in trash just like any typical northern Japan beach, but other than that it was very pretty!

Love that so many of the roads are lined with flowers!

Yes, I was a little nervous...

There's a shrine on top of the rock.

Shiriyazaki lighthouse.

On the way back home we stopped at an area I'd found on the map called Hiba Buried Forest, wasn't exactly sure what to expect but here's the few pictures I took until I was almost eaten alive by mosquitoes. We pretty much ran back to the car and I was still getting bit. I counted over 40 bites, many of them were swollen to the size of quarters by the time we got to the car. We went from never seeing any mosquitoes here to walking into a forest highly infested and found out that I'm highly allergic and I'm way more attractive than Keenan! Had some benadryl in the car so I think I avoided some of the reaction...
From what I can find through roughly translated pages this was an ancient forest and some of the remains of the ancient trees are still standing, but are partially buried from a couple thousand years of blowing sand.

This was one of the ancient trees.

Watch out for bears!

Up next: We visit Tokyo!